


(OLD REPOST) A Therapeutic Chain of Events

by define_serenity



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-06
Updated: 2009-06-06
Packaged: 2018-08-11 19:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7904173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens while he’s burning, fire scorching skin, eating, licking away at the seams. That’s when it happens, deep in the cavernous tortures of his own mind he sees something that shocks him, stings him, hurts him to the bone.</p><p>A boy.</p><p>He’s got brown hair and matching brown eyes, and there is not a single doubt in his mind that this boy is his own flesh and blood. Is this the future?</p>
            </blockquote>





	(OLD REPOST) A Therapeutic Chain of Events

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from _Camisado_ by Panic! at the Disco. Prompts are in italics.

_ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams _

It happens while he’s burning, fire scorching skin, eating, licking away at the seams. He’s dead, a shard of glass right through his cerebellum, incapacitating him while the building comes down around him. But that’s when it happens, deep in the cavernous tortures of his own mind he sees something that shocks him, stings him, hurts him to the bone.

A boy.

He’s got brown hair and matching brown eyes, and there is not a single doubt in his mind, albeit his mind is made of shattered pieces of glass now, that this boy is his own flesh and blood. Is this the _future_? But he’s dead, how can his powers start working in the moment his life is slipping away from him? Maybe this is –, just maybe, it could be _hell_.

Then there’s something that reaches out to him in the dark, something light, elusive, not discernable through the fog already pulled over his eyes. He breathes in deep, coming back to life, again, life coursing through him, blood rushing through his veins. _This_ is hell right here.

“Why did you bring me back?” he asks, voice leaving a rumble pulsing through the room, and he gets up from the cold metal slab his dead body was resting on. 

Peter turns around and looks at the man he once believed to be his brother.

“Same reason I brought her back.” Peter nods towards the other side of the room, and he frowns while turning his head. 

Elle gets up from her slab slowly, looking at him with eyes reading hate and loathing, an inequity she leaves unspoken. Her bare feet touch the floor as she stands up to walk away, leaving bloody footprints on the white square tiles.

_ So now eat your words / I hope you choke _

The dream returns to him almost every night after that, happy boyish smiles and giggles and him making waffles. Until Elle, once again, becomes another protagonist in his visions. He still doesn’t know if it’s his ability trying to tell him something, a harbinger of a brighter future, or his empathy going haywire now that Elle is back.

Peter assigns them to different teams, so they don’t talk, at all if it were ever up to Elle. 

Weeks pass by, both of them sent out on several missions to safely extract the specials still running from the law, and Gabriel finds a strange satisfaction in it.

But nothing in this world had ever come easy to either Elle or Gabriel, and they see each other on a semi-regular basis, though not a single word is uttered between them. There are silent spiteful remarks at the tip of her tongue and pain shining through in her eyes, and she knows she has no right to say anything. 

Neither does he.

“You lied to me,” he would say, cornering her in the hallway, pressing her back against the wall while he pins her down with his telekinesis. She’d struggle, at first, but quickly come to realize that resisting him was futile.

“Yes, I did,” she’d admit defeat and tell the truth all in one breath, avoiding his eyes because saying this much leaves her exposed to heartbreak and death all over again.

“ _Why_?” He’d shake at her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. He can picture the fury in her bright blue eyes, electricity right below the surface. She could release it, or not, either way it wouldn’t kill him and watching him burn would no longer give her any satisfaction.

“You hold on to so many things, Gabriel,” her voice strange to him, holding wisdom and perhaps even truth. “Your past, your parents. I tried to make you realize that you can be free.” The same words Angela spoke, but those had been a lie. He can’t test the truth of a make-believe conversation. “ _We_ could have been free.”

They never say it, but they both know it to be true. Peter had given them another chance. _Yet_ , another chance, in a world hanging from a precarious thread. If they make the wrong move, if they act on their frustrations, everything they are working for could come crumbling down.

_ My fingers are still burning from the last time _

“Elle, watch out!” he calls out to her, but quickly realizes she won’t be able to escape the rain of gunfire reeling towards her. It happens fast, him running towards her, pushing her aside with the weight of his own body, and she falls to the ground, bumping her head upon landing. He doesn’t know why it comes to him then, a single flash, a split-second image.

A boy. Right there in her eyes.

“Get off me,” she sneers up at him, a look of desperation colouring her features as memories come seeping back to both of them from months ago. Him on top of her, telling her how no-one really changes; same context, entirely different interpretation. He can’t for the life of him remember why he ever took her life, why he felt the need to punish her for all the lies, while all the lies he sold were nothing compared to hers.

His eyes settle in hers briefly, crawling inside, until she pushes him off rudely, watching how Peter, Noah and Claire take care of the rest of the fight. He’s still watching her when she gets up, shaking the dust from her clothes while she avoids his eyes, but he can’t stop, he can’t go back to ignoring anything between them.

__

_ I hold the whole world accused / but I’ve only got myself to blame _

“Elle,” he would say, to start a conversation, one-way or not, it doesn’t really matter to him, he just needs to say it. And he does, out loud, no longer make-believe or solely in his mind. It surprises him as much as it does her.

She only looks at him when the sound of his voice reaches her, her name rolling from his tongue like he’s called her by it a thousand times before. There’s something in his eyes she can’t quite place, new and alien at the same time.

He wants to ask her why; why they can’t work, why she can’t look at him without accusing him of everything that has ever gone wrong in her life and maybe even more so. Why she loved him back when everything else was going wrong.  Most especially, whether that was a lie too. Because now, he’d be able to tell.

“Because you killed my father,” she would answer him, and she’d be right. He did it to hurt her, to get his revenge without thinking of the future, unlike he is now. “Because you killed _me._ "

The situation would be hilarious if it didn’t hurt so goddamn much. He doesn’t say anything else, just her name, a quiet expression of his deep caring for her, something she ignores with whole her heart.

_ In red-eyed pain I’m knocking on your door again _

Noah Bennet dies in her arms, one of the only non-specials that had been willing to stand by their side, but he dies, in her frail arms, begging her to take care of his Claire. She doesn’t know how to handle it, something drops inside her chest, her heart perhaps, and the tears she never shed for her father, she cries for _glasses himself_.

Peter holds her, not as tight as he used to, because much in the same way Claire is losing her ability to empathize with all of it, Peter too, has lost too much to allow himself to feel much of anything. She takes what she can from him, one of the only men still in her life willing to stand next to her, or actually give a shit, but long after Peter has gone back to more important matters, she’s feeling lost and alone, _her_ heart broken instead of Claire’s.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispers, his voice low and husky, like he’s having a hard time dealing with this himself. “I know how much he meant to you,” he says, while really he means to say that Noah meant something to the both of them. He’s not sure what, but what he is sure about is that somewhere along the lines, in the few years he’d known Noah Bennet, he had admired the man.

She looks up at him from between the strands of her blonde hair, not sure what she should say to him now. Deep down she wants the silence to be enough, because she knows that whatever comes out of her mouth will hurt one of them, probably both, and she’s hurting too much. So instead of speaking, she gets up slowly, and takes a few steps closer to him.

“Can you make the pain go away?” her eyes are red with anger and previously shed tears when she looks up into his eyes. He doesn’t know what to tell her, mainly because this is nothing compared to last time, and the only reason she’s allowing herself to be this close to him is because she’s searching for something to hold on to.

“Elle…” he starts, but her lips are on his before he knows it, before he can tell her no, before he’s able to produce any rational thought in his mind. And then she’s on her tippy toes, reaching for him, for more, for all of it, for everything, her hands digging in the front of his pants. 

“Elle. Stop.” He grabs her by her forearms, and holds her at arm’s length.

There’s surprise in her eyes right there, bright and blue, and begging him to work magic he’s not even sure he can give her. He kisses her on her forehead instead, and holds her, tighter than Peter could ever have, and when she closes her eyes, he shows her.

A boy. Right there in her arms.

 

_ My moral standing is lying down _

Sometimes he can’t keep her from getting hurt, like when she’s careless or lets her emotions get the best of her, and like now, she gets shot. She screams, fire and brimstone, cursing God and the guy that shot her, even though he’s very dead now. 

“Don’t tell me to be quiet, it frakking hurts,” she sneers between clenched jaws. “Can’t you just give me the blood?” She squeezes her eyes shut, and tries to bite through the pain, Gabriel pulling the bullet out of her shoulder.

“Claire and Peter are out in the field,” he answers when he grabs needle and thread, watching her eyes go wide and then there’s a sharp intake of breath; so far she’s always refused to let him heal her. He’s never questioned it, and it’s never been an issue. Until now.

“Then give me yours.” She shies away from the needle and looks at him urgently. She doesn’t need this pain, she’s had enough of that in her life; at least now she can make it her decision. 

He doesn’t hesitate a single second; he just grabs an IV from the table and inserts it in his arm, then hers.

She lies back and closes her eyes, a warmth spreading throughout her body, something she missed when Peter brought her back to life. A warmth she has felt before, in someone’s arms. 

“Is  he real?” her eyes shoot open, words coming out on impulse. “Is he our future?” 

He averts his eyes, mostly because he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to be caught telling any more lies. 

“I don’t know,” he answers quietly, and hears her shifting on the bed. “He could be. We don’t have to keep doing this forever.”

_ Destiny is calling me _

__

“We need you here, Gabriel,” Peter tells him, and takes few steps towards him. “The world needs you.” 

It’s been so long since he’s heard words like that come out of anyone’s mouth. He can be a hero, if he wants to, if he steps up and takes the job.

“I love her, Peter,” he answers calmly, these words being true but Peter still reacts to them as if they are simply incompatible with Sylar, the serial killer, a frown colouring the other man’s face. “My dreams…”

“Your dreams are what keep you going, keep you fighting. Just like the rest of us." Angela steps forward and he whirls around quickly. Memories of dying and lies come creeping up his spine, but in the world they currently live in, there is no room for persona vendettas on one side of the line.

“Nathan has developed a new formula.” Peter jumps in, watching the power struggle going on between his mother and Gabriel. “We have to stop him before this gets out of hand.” Peter looks at him urgently. “We need you, Gabriel,” he pleads one last time, and then walks out of the room, leaving Gabriel to stand alone.

“What was that all about?” Elle would ask as she walks into the room, nonchalantly, her blonde hair waving around her shoulders. He would look at her, and already know what to do, painfully so, but truthfully she destroyed him long ago and he killed her.

“I’m staying,” he would say, and he does say it, out loud, but only to himself and the image of Elle set up in his mind. She would genuinely be surprised, and yell at him, accuse him of broken promises and dreams left unfulfilled. He’d kiss her, like he kissed her the very first time, taking what he wanted, but, more importantly, what he needed.

“But… our son.” 

There’d be tears in her eyes, and a hurt in her heart same as his, but then he realizes it’s only really _his_ heart that’s in pain. He’s the one with the dreams, the visions, the hallucinations, all images to cope with a world he understands no longer.

“He would be the only thing we ever did right together,” he whispers, and sees his son, clear as day, taking Elle’s hand, leading her out of the room.

 

 

** \- fin -  **

 


End file.
